The Pretty Delicious Cafe Read online

  ‘I’ll find something. It’ll be fine.’

  ‘Look, we’ve got a first-aid kit at the café. Why don’t you come and do it properly? My car’s just around the corner.’

  ‘Hadn’t you better go back in and see your friends?’

  This continued refusal of my hospitality was getting depressing. ‘I’m going home,’ I said. ‘You do what you like – it’s your hand.’

  Jed looked at me sideways. ‘Actually, the first-aid kit sounds good,’ he said.

  We cut diagonally across the car park, rounded the corner of Ratai Plumbing and Gas and got into my dusty, middle-aged Toyota Corolla, Jed wrapping the bottom of his shirt around his hand to stop it bleeding on the upholstery.

  ‘Are you opening the café tomorrow?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, backing the car around.

  ‘Busy?’ he asked at the same time as I said, ‘Have –?’

  We both paused, and then I said, ‘Yes,’ as he said, ‘What was that?’

  There was another pause.

  ‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘Can’t remember.’ And we lapsed into slightly uncomfortable silence.

  The police had set up a roadblock just before the town boundary. They were helping an impeccably tailored and highly indignant older woman out of her car when I pulled up, which was lucky for me, because the officer with the breathalyser was distracted by her shrill complaints from checking my car’s warrant of fitness.

  ‘Phew,’ I said as he waved me forwards.

  ‘Why, how much have you had to drink?’

  ‘Hardly anything, but my warrant’s two months overdue.’

  ‘Your service is four months overdue,’ he said.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I looked at the sticker on your windscreen.’

  ‘Do you always do that when you get into someone’s car?’

  Jed smiled. ‘Only if it makes a noise like yours,’ he said.

  ‘Is it a terminal noise?’ I asked anxiously.

  ‘No, it’s just a loose fan belt.’ This was encouraging, until he spoilt it by adding, ‘I wonder if you’ve got vacuum issues too. The throttle’s a bit slow responding when you put your foot down.’

  ‘Is that terminal?’

  ‘Nah. It’ll probably get worse, though. Better bring it in some time.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll bring it down one night after work.’

  We managed to reach the café without the car’s engine falling out onto the road. I parked by the back door, since I would have to take Jed home again, and limped up the kitchen steps to retrieve the key from underneath a terracotta pot of oregano.

  ‘Does your ex know where you keep that key?’ he asked.

  I bit my lip. ‘Yes. I’ll move it.’

  I unlocked the door and went in, turning on the lights. Putting my bag down on the butcher’s block, I kicked my shoes off and climbed onto the bench to retrieve the first-aid kit from its high shelf.

  ‘Something smells good,’ Jed said, going to the sink to wash the blood off his hands.

  ‘Slow-roasted pork for tomorrow’s sandwiches.’

  Holding the first-aid kit, I sat down on the bench and slid awkwardly to my feet, landing with all my weight on the good knee.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

  ‘My knee just didn’t like dancing much. You know, you look like an axe murderer.’

  He looked down at his blood-smeared shirt and made a face. ‘It’s amazing how far blood goes.’

  ‘Like milk. You spill a litre on the floor and it covers about half an acre,’ I said, handing him a paper towel.

  ‘Thanks.’ He wet it under the tap and scrubbed a trickle of dried blood off the inside of his right forearm. ‘Would you mind putting a couple of plasters across this thing?’

  ‘This thing’ was a cut an inch long, gaping open to show a gleam of white underneath and bleeding freely again after being washed.

  ‘Shit, is that bone?’ I said.

  ‘I think it’s only the tendon that runs down the back of your finger. It’s just under the skin – it’s no big deal.’

  ‘Oh, stop being so staunch and manly. It must be really sore.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s awful,’ he said. ‘A lesser man would have passed out.’

  I attempted my mother’s Stern Look – with, judging from the reaction, about her level of success – and began to dry his hand with another paper towel. The oven’s fan hummed in the background and I could hear the soft, persistent thud of a moth hurling itself against the nearest window. I was very much aware of how close Jed was, and of the warmth of his hand in mine.

  ‘Have you talked to your son?’ I asked, gently blotting the wound.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Finally. I’m having him for the day tomorrow.’

  ‘Jed, that’s great. I hope you guys can sort something out.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Me too.’

  ‘When d’you think you’ll move back to Thames?’ I asked, keeping my voice carefully light and unconcerned.

  ‘I told Monty I’d stay till the end of January,’ he said. ‘He’s got a fishing trip planned.’

  ‘Of course he does.’ I found a little packet of Steri-Strips in the first-aid kit and used them to tack the edges of the wound together, then covered it with a gauze pad. ‘That actually looks quite professional,’ I said, taking the cellophane wrapper off a roll of bandage. ‘It’s kind of fun getting to use something out of the first-aid kit other than a plaster.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re enjoying it.’

  ‘You should probably go to A and E on the way to Thames tomorrow and get it stitched up properly.’

  ‘Mm-hmm.’

  ‘You’re not going to, are you?’

  ‘Probably not,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘Men. My dad poked himself in the eye with a piece of wire once, and he wouldn’t even go to the doctor for that.’

  ‘I think I’d go if I got a bit of wire in my eye.’

  ‘You think?’ I finished wrapping his hand and stuck down the end of the bandage with elastoplast. ‘Is that too tight? It’d be a shame to cut off the circulation completely.’

  ‘It’s just right,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’ And he bent and kissed my cheek.

  We stood and looked at one another for a long moment. He does like me, I thought, and smiled at him in quick unthinking delight. At which he kissed me again.

  It was an excellent kiss, breathless and urgent, and it lasted a long time.

  Eventually we broke apart, and my common sense, temporarily detained by a pink haze of lust, caught up with me. ‘But you’re leaving,’ I said.

  He took a long, slightly shaky breath. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Bugger it.’

  I rested my forehead against his shoulder, and he put his arms around me. It felt very, very nice.

  ‘There are always weekends,’ he said at last.

  ‘I work weekends.’

  ‘What about in winter?’

  ‘All weekends, all year round, for the foreseeable future.’

  He sighed. ‘Well, that sucks.’

  ‘Good kiss, though,’ I said into his shirt.

  ‘I thought so,’ he said, tightening his arms.

  ‘Jed? What’s your real name?’

  He gave a little snort of laughter. ‘Jessamy.’

  I looked up. ‘Really?’

  ‘Old family name.’

  ‘Does anyone call you by it?’

  ‘Only my mother, when she’s telling me off.’

  ‘Jessamy,’ I said thoughtfully, trying it out.

  ‘Please don’t.’

  ‘I will take your secret to the grave,’ I said, reaching up to kiss him again. Of course it wasn’t any better an idea than it had been two minutes ago, but it’s hard to focus properly on the future drawbacks of something so enjoyable in the present.

  I enjoyed it for about three seconds, and then pulled back with a jerk. Something’s wrong, something’s going to happen . . . I felt suddenly
taut and brittle, as if I’d been stretched too tight and was fraying at the edges.

  Jed looked at me in surprise. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

  His cell phone started to ring, and as he reached into the hip pocket of his jeans and silenced it my unease sharpened into panic.

  ‘You need to get that,’ I said tightly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Answer it! Something’s wrong!’

  Eyeing me with a certain amount of wariness, he took the phone out of his pocket. He glanced at it and his eyebrows snapped together. Half turning away from me, he pushed a button and held the phone to his ear.

  ‘What’s up?’ he asked, and the feeling of panic vanished in a flood of relief. Crisis averted, whatever the crisis was.

  I leant back shakily against the bench.

  The voice on the other end of the phone was female, shrill and excited, and I couldn’t hear the individual words.

  ‘Hey!’ said Jed. ‘Tracey! Slow down!’

  There was another high-pitched barrage of words, of which I caught only, ‘– fucking amazing! Baby, you’ve got to try it, it’s –’

  ‘Where’s Craig? Tracey! Is he okay? Trace!’ He took a deep breath, and lowered his voice with an effort. ‘Are you at home? No, I’m – Yeah, okay. Yes. Is Craig still up? Okay, fair enough. Can your mum –?’

  She must have hung up on him then – he swore softly and scrolled through the menu on his phone. I withdrew to the other side of the kitchen and rummaged unnecessarily in a drawer as he put the phone back to his ear, trying to give him at least the illusion of privacy.

  ‘Hi, it’s Jed, here,’ he said. Then, ‘Yeah, fine. Look, Rochelle, where are you? Can you go over to stay with Tracey and Craig? Just for a couple of hours. She just rang – she’s up. Bouncing off the walls. And I’m in Ratai, it’ll take me a while to get there . . . Thank you. You’re a lifesaver. I’m sorry about your party . . . Okay, see you soon.’ He ended the call and shoved his phone back in his pocket. ‘Sorry, I’ve got to go. Would you mind running me back down to the van?’

  ‘Take my car, if you like,’ I said. ‘It’ll be quicker. Unless you think it won’t make it that far?’

  He bit his lip, thinking. ‘You don’t need it tomorrow?’

  ‘No, but – are you alright to drive? It’s New Year’s Eve; the roads’ll be crawling with cops.’

  ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Ten forty.’

  ‘Five or six beers since seven . . .’

  ‘You’re probably over the limit. I’ll drive you.’ He frowned, and I added, ‘I won’t come in. I’ll wait in the car – or just drop you off, if you like, and leave you to it.’

  ‘Lia, it’s nearly three hours each way, and you’ve got to work tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s okay. I’m sorry, I know I keep shoving my nose into your life, but you’ll be really screwed if you’re arrested for driving drunk.’

  Jed looked at me with a small, crooked smile. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Thank you. Again.’

  Chapter 13

  I only had a quarter of a tank of petrol, so I pulled in at the first petrol station we passed, just south of the Ratai turn-off on State Highway One. Jed got out and began filling the car.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ he said as I started towards the shop.

  I looked at his bloodstained shirt. ‘Perhaps you’d better not, looking like that. You’ll scare the person behind the counter.’

  ‘They’ll have seen it all before,’ he said. ‘Here, you finish this.’ And abandoning the pump he strode purposefully across the brightly lit forecourt.

  I filled the car and got back behind the wheel. Jed followed a minute later, clamping two cans of energy drink under his right arm so he could open the door with his uninjured left hand. He got into the car and offered one of the drinks to me.

  ‘Not just now, thanks,’ I said.

  He put both cans by his feet and did up his seatbelt, wincing as he pushed it home with the bandaged hand.

  ‘Do you want a couple of Panadol?’ I asked, starting the car. ‘There are some in my bag.’

  ‘No thanks.’ And the silence settled back over us, as heavy and uncomfortable as a horse blanket.

  ‘Don’t worry too much,’ I said at last. ‘It’s – I’m sure everything’s going to be okay.’

  ‘Are you?’ he said with grim amusement.

  ‘Before you answered the phone I was . . . worried. Like something bad was going to happen. But now I’m not. I know that sounds like complete New Age hippy crap.’

  ‘You knew my phone was going to ring, didn’t you?’

  ‘No, but – something felt wrong. I didn’t know what; just that something was going to happen.’

  Jed reached out and extracted a dead leaf from the air vent in front of him. ‘Before I met you, I thought anyone who talked about being psychic was a total fraud,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t talk about it, if I can help it.’

  ‘I know you don’t,’ he said. ‘It’s like getting blood out of a stone.’

  I laughed. ‘Now that’s ironic, coming from you.’

  He looked at me. ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, you’re not exactly free with details about your personal life.’

  ‘Because sitting the girl you like down and telling her all about your train wreck of a marriage is such a great way to impress her,’ he said dryly.

  I smiled, both touched and reassured. ‘A bit like telling the boy you like about your psychic powers.’ I said ‘psychic powers’ in an inverted comma–implying voice, so as not to sound as if I took myself quite that seriously.

  ‘Which are?’

  ‘You’re very persistent, aren’t you?’

  Jed said nothing, pointedly.

  ‘They’re really not all that impressive,’ I said. ‘I can often tell what sort of mood Rob’s in, and vice versa. As you know. It’s mostly just a vague impression, though; having him turn up with a rifle was a first . . . I usually know who’s on the other end of the phone before I answer it, as long as it’s someone I’ve met before. And sometimes I’ll suddenly feel happy or worried or excited for no obvious reason, and then a few seconds later something’ll happen that fits the emotion.’

  ‘And your brother’s the same?’

  ‘He says he’s not, but I think he just refuses to pay any attention to his hunches on principle. Rob doesn’t like weird shit. That’s a direct quote.’

  ‘Do you?’ he asked.

  ‘I – I don’t dislike it, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to take it all too seriously,’ I said slowly. ‘I used to think it must all mean something, and I was probably going to save the world some day. You know – go on a quest for the Grail, or rid the world of an evil overlord, or something. But eventually it occurred to me that being a little bit psychic isn’t all that impressive, and if I didn’t get over myself I was going to turn into the type of person who wants some sort of sign before deciding what to have for breakfast.’

  Jed laughed.

  ‘Your turn,’ I said.

  ‘My turn?’

  ‘Why are you rushing off to see your ex-wife in the middle of the night? Actually, why would she ring you, if she was running away from you last week?’

  He sighed and leant his head back against his seat. ‘Because she’s as high as a kite.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said blankly.

  ‘She’s not on drugs. Well, she might be, anything’s possible . . . Tracey’s bipolar. She’ll have stopped taking her medication. As she does.’ By now I had a reasonable handle on Jed’s less-is-more approach to the disclosure of personal information, so I was quite surprised when, after a moment, he continued, ‘We got together when we were seventeen. We flatted together when I moved to Thames, and then when I finished my apprenticeship we decided to get our own place and start a family. It was a bloody stupid idea, but when you’re twenty you think you know everything. And Trace had had a pretty crappy childhood, in and out of foster homes. She w
anted to feel settled and have a family of her own. So we got married –’

  ‘At twenty?’

  ‘Mm. Went down like a lead balloon with our parents.’

  ‘Funny, that,’ I said.

  ‘Then she had a couple of miscarriages . . . Anyway, eventually we had Craig. And when he was two weeks old she was diagnosed with postnatal psychosis.’

  ‘That’s not the same as postnatal depression, is it?’

  ‘No. Not sleeping, overexcitement, talking flat out but not making any sense, delusions . . . It was pretty scary.’

  ‘I bet,’ I said softly.

  ‘Our parents were great. My mum and Tracey’s foster mum took turns to come and stay when I was at work, and Trace responded quite well to the medication, for a while. And then – she pretty much lost the plot. In the end they diagnosed rapidly cycling bipolar disorder. I don’t know how much you know about it . . . ?’

  ‘Almost nothing.’

  ‘Lucky you,’ he said. ‘Mostly it was severe depression, but every few months she’d have a couple of weeks of mania. She’d be over-the-top excited, deciding she didn’t need her medication, buying stuff we couldn’t afford . . . I bailed out six months ago.’ His voice was flat and tired. ‘She’s having a manic episode at the moment, by the sound of it. She’s not fit to look after herself, let alone Craig. And her foster mum can’t go over at this time of night; her dad’s not well. I called one of her friends – she’s there now, but –’ He bent and picked up a can of energy drink, holding it between his knees and opening it with his left hand.

  ‘Craig’s nearly four, isn’t he?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s four in February.’

  ‘Staying for over three years with someone who isn’t the person you married any more doesn’t really sound like bailing out to me.’

  ‘You’re very good at making people feel better about themselves, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘I don’t know. I felt like I’d tried everything and nothing had worked. I thought maybe she’d take a bit more responsibility for getting better if I wasn’t there. But maybe it’s made things worse.’ Evidently feeling that enough feelings had been shared for one evening he leant forwards and turned on the radio, and Taylor Swift assured us loudly that she wasn’t a princess.

  I winced. It’s so uncool to be discovered listening to girly pop music; almost as bad as being caught reading Mills and Boon. Although of course someone really cool wouldn’t care.